K'NEX Thunderbird 1

Come in, International Rescue!

Hello and welcome to this ible where I'll show you how to build a Thunderbird 1 model out of K'NEX pieces!
The Thunderbird 1 is a rescue vehicle from International Rescue, featured in Thunderbirds, a 1960's television series where in each episode disaster struck (often due to a villain called the Hood), which International Rescue had to solve.

I've started building this model back in 2019. I have had it laying finished for quite a while, but decided to make a video and instructions for it. In the following video you can see a quick speed build of the model and a complete deconstruction, ready to use the pieces in a next model!

And if you have more time, you can watch the more in-detail video about the model, in which I explain how I built it and show some moving features.

The ible and the building process consists of 4 steps:

1. Building the Bottom Hull

2. Building the Wing Mechanism and Middle Hull

3. Building the Top Cone

4. Building the Thrusters & Finishing Up

I hope you will enjoy building it as much as I did creating the model!

Note: Numbers over 100 can be subject of counting errors (I try not to, of course)
Rods:

• 2 grey
• 2 metallic green
• 9 red
• 2 granite
• 2 flexi orange
• 74 metallic blue
• 4 white
• 150 silver
• 156 black

Connectors:

• 20 grey 1-way
• 11 grey 2-way (V-shape)
• 64 brown 2-way (long shape)
• 28 granite 3-way
• 4 black 4-way
• 38 grey 5-way
• 19 black 8-way
• 16 metallic blue 7-way 3D
• 164 silver 4-way 3D

Other:

• 1 silver Ball half
• 1 red cone
• 9 knexman head translucent red
• 17 spacer 1,5 width
• 14 blue spacer 0,5 width
• 2 nose clip
• 1 clip without nose (blue)
• 1 black hinge part
• 1 elastic band (12 mm diameter, or ½ inch)
• 6 ball joint cup
• 22 ball joint ball
• 158 Y-clip black
• 10 Y-clip silver

In this step, we'll start off by building the core of the ship. The two grey rods that run through the centre connect the whole ship together. Make sure the part with the blue rods are placed exactly as in the pictures, otherwise you will run into trouble later on the build.
I've distinguished between the 1-side and the mechanism-side of the hull.

This step continues where we left off and starts by building the number 1 from white rods. Then we move over to the other side to install the wing mechanism, soon followed by the wing covers and the wings themselves.
Also you this step shows you a simple stand you can make. NOTE: The parts for this stand are not included in the parts list!

In this step you'll build the top cone of the ship. Be aware, this is the hardest part of the ship and it's quite tricky to get in place. What you can perhaps do, it leave some more gaps, by leaving out the opposite faced 3D connectors. Also I found the unattached 8-way connector at the top to be not super helpful, so you can decide to leave it out.

We start building the thrusters by making a cross shaped section. To each section, a small wing is attached with its own thrusters. At the end, we add the main thruster. Then your own Thunderbird 1 is complete! Congratulations!
- F.A.B. Scott!